Author: Wildbow

Wild Abandon – 18.10 | Pale

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She typed as she walked.

Verona:
do you want me to come?

The response was so fast, she had to think Lucy had already had her phone out.

Lucy
No.  Mom’s fussing.
You’ll get caught up in it.
Maybe do some homework so you look good if my mom asks what you’re doing.

“Ugh.”

Verona was wearing her black-dyed jacket, sweater, jeans, boots, and had her cat mask hanging off the side of her bag, her cloak wrapped around her neck as a pseudo-scarf.  But more than that, she was wearing a thick layer of dust.  It cascaded off her when she took too heavy a step, so she took as many heavy steps as she could, hands in her coat pockets, skip-running toward her Demesne.

Well, with boots on, it was more like a stomp-run than a skip-run.

Her bead bracelet ticked, cube-shaped bead turning and pressing against her wrist until it came around those ninety-degrees, with an impact a bit like a snap of the fingers.

She changed direction, picking up speed.

Hmm.  She could try calling a Dog Tag.

Except they didn’t have a formalized summoning thing like they’d had with John.  If that would even work.  Maybe they weren’t developed or mature enough.

But even if it did work, it might be rude.

They hadn’t sworn any oaths to Verona, Lucy, or Avery.  They’d made deals to be able to visit and stay in Kennet, but that wasn’t much.

If she looked back over her shoulders between buildings, she could see the statue that had been erected for John.  For all soldiers, but for John in particular.

When she turned her head back away to look forward, she glanced for a quarter-second in the direction the bracelet was indicating.

A practitioner.  One of Musser’s thugs.

Anthem’s out, America’s gone, the Undercity isn’t their hideaway anymore.  Not without America’s goblins to help hold the line.  So they’re back up here.  Kennet above.

Kennet found was the safest way to travel, but getting there required calling Miss or drawing a portal, and it wasn’t worth that hassle.  She could tell herself it was better if she did this, and discovered that there were people prowling around.

She rounded the corner of the building, scooping up a grocery bag that was blowing across the road.  She put it on like a glove, then thrust her hand into the trash can at the side of an alley, partially protected by the thin plastic.  “Kittycough, Kittycough, Kittycough.”

She dug around, careful of any hard or sharp edges, until she found the naked flesh.  She pulled Kittycough out by the back of the neck.  The goblin, who sort of resembled a hairless cat, dangled, eyes wide, head low, limbs limp, a kitchen knife in one hand.  Paw?  Claw?

“Hey!” Verona raised her voice, “Practitioner!”

“Kid!” the man called out.

“Tell me you’re friendly if you’re friendly!”

There wasn’t a reply.

“Tell me you wouldn’t ambush me and hurt me if you thought you could get away with it!”

Again, silence.

“Guy!?” she called out.

Kittycough raised the paw that held the kitchen knife and pointed up, eyes rolling up to move in line with the moving point of the kitchen knife.

“He’s going up?”

Kittycough nodded.

“Wish it was clearer their intent was hostile.”

Kittycough moved one limb over, bracing it horizontally against Verona’s upper arm.  Knife brandished.

“You think?”

Kittycough nodded.

“Want to deal with it?”

The goblin nodded again.

“Be careful, some of them are war mages, they’re pretty good at binding goblins.  Incapacitate, don’t maim, get some goblin help if you need it.”

She dropped Kittycough, who turned into the alley, pausing partway to hack, cough, and spit out a hairball.

“I gotchu,” Kittycough rasped, before slinking off into the darkness.

“How do you have a hairball that big if you don’t even have any hair?” she asked the darkness.  “Wait, maybe that’s a dumb question.  Maybe it’s how would you have hair if you had hairballs that big?”

She frowned.

She looked at the hairball, lying soggy and weird on the road, moving slightly because there was something alive caught up in there, maybe a worm, and she used her Sight.

The tattered wisps and trails of it pointed in three directions, and none of those directions were ones Kittycough was likely to have gone.

Verona shook her head, then headed on her way.

The practitioner had reached the top of the building, and crouched there, holding paper.

She’d left the Sight on, and she could see the gauze billowing up into three pillars that were gradually filling with meat gunk.

“Don’t do it,” she said, knowing she was too far away for him to hear.  She shook her head.

He only put more effort into it.

“You complete and utter nincompoop,” she said.

The gauzy shapes were almost filled to the brim when he stumbled, then fell.

It was only a one-story building, like half the buildings downtown, and so the fall wasn’t horrific, but it was still a fall from that high up without any real plan on meeting the ground.  He landed on hands first, knees second, hands gave way, so face was third.

And then he lay there, twisting around onto his side, giving her a clear view of his rear end, where he’d been cut sideways across the butt cheeks, the kitchen knife left lodged in and poking up out of one cheek.

The summoned Others in progress deflated.  To her regular vision, shadowy silhouettes slipped back into darkness.

People inside one of the shops came outside, hurrying over to the man, and Verona backed away, watching to make sure everything was okay, until the scene was out of sight.

She was most of the way to the House on Half Street when she heard the sirens of the ambulance.

Verona shook herself like a dog as she reached the foot of Half Street, shedding dust, and then swept her arm out.  “Open the way!”

The trees and bushes parted, space distorting, city magic style.

She pulled her hand out of her pocket and pointed at the door.  “Bang.”

It opened.  She also felt a pressure around it, which made her narrow her eyes.

She thought of it like those experiments where a rat was connected to another rat’s body by remote signal, and could feel what the other rat felt.  She had that connection to the property, faint and general.  And there was something on the doorstep, but not on the doorstep.

A squirrel and pigeon descended from the upper portion of the house as she walked up to the front steps.

“Hey guys.  Come on in.  McCauleigh!  Are you in here!?”

“Here!  How did it go!?”

“Got Anthem.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.  Downside?  Lucy’s in the hospital-”

“Bad?”

“Don’t think.  But her mom’s freaked.”

McCauleigh came down from upstairs as Verona entered the front hall.  “That’s too bad.  Man, I wish- You’re dusty.”

“Bridge collapse.”

“Cool.  I wish my parents cared more about me getting hurt.”

“Yeah?”

“Skinned my knees learning to ride a bike, their response?  Is that all?”

“Huh.”

“Knife in my thigh?  You’ll live.  Bitten by a goblin?  That’ll fix right up.”

“Technically true, I guess.  Not what you want to hear with a knife in your thigh.  Oh, I just had a goblin handle an imminent ambush.  Guy got knifed, fell off a building onto his hands and knees.  And face.”

“Huh!”

“Cut his ass open.  Knife left in his butt cheek.  It’d be comical if it wasn’t, you know, horrible.”

“Who was it?”  McCauleigh asked, sitting on the stairs.  She wore a tank top and pyjama pants.

“Uhhhh, goatee, shaved head, black jacket, gray sweatshirt, papers… summoned Others?”

“Octopus mouth?” McCauleigh asked.

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Mouth in an ‘o’ shape, resting?  Like he’s a monkey in the middle of an ‘ook’?  Or an octopus?”

“I’m wondering now if you’ve ever seen an octopus,” Verona said.

“But was it?  Did he?” McCauleigh asked.

“I guess, maybe?”

“Then probably Bodean.  They’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel, huh?”

“I guess.  My goblin buddy sure scraped the bottom of Bodean’s metaphorical barrel,” Verona said, not even really thinking about the comment as she said it.

McCauleigh suppressed a laugh, then when she made eye contact with Verona, shook with harder laughter.

It was the kind of laughter where, the longer Verona didn’t react, except for one raised eyebrow, the harder McCauleigh laughed, until she was laughing at the fact she was laughing as hard as she was.  She slumped over onto her side, curling up on the stair, shaking.

“You have fun,” Verona said.  The squirrel and pigeon had laid out some papers on the little table.  Clothing orders made, delivery was pending.  Recommended tip for delivery and the shopping: bag of peanuts.

“Do you guys want that bag of peanuts in a bowl or do you just want the bag and you can take that when you go?”

Verona put out one hand, palm up, as she asked about the bowl, and one as she asked about the bag to go.

The squirrel went for the bowl while the pigeon went for the bag.

The bird and squirrel turned to one another and the squirrel started chittering, while the pigeon interjected with the occasional pigeon coo.  They had a little animal argument, which Verona watched with amusement.

“Get on the same page about what you want and get back to me.  Sounds doable, either way.  I’ve got a decent size bag in my snack stash, I think.  That work?”

That got responses she chose to interpret as affirmative-sounding.

“McCauleigh?”

McCauleigh had stopped laughing as hard but was still slumped over, torso and shoulder on the stair, head, arm, and legs sticking down.  “Yeah?”

“Got guests just outside.  Letting you know so you can change if you want.”

“Who?”

“Dunno!  Want to go pull on jeans and whatever?”

“Yeah, sure,” McCauleigh replied.  She slid down a stair in the process of working her way back to an upright position.

“And, uh, just saying, but with Anthem beat, you might want to consider your options if you want to prolong your stay.  I think I can rig it to be pretty low-key and long-term.  And one of the people at the door might be able to help, so… if you want to get jeans on?”

“Yep.”

Verona switched the Demesne around and opened the door.

“Oh, and uh-” McCauleigh said.

Verona stopped the door after opening it an inch.  There was a grunt from the other side as someone walked into it.

“What’s that?”

“Awkward to bring up, but thanks,” McCauleigh said, hooking a thumb under a bra strap at her shoulder, lifting it up a bit.

“For sure,”  Verona replied.  She’d grabbed some old stuff and left it near McCauleigh’s things.  McCauleigh was more fit and taller than Verona, but Verona’s old stuff fit her better than it did Verona, and she knew from the dream it was a thing that had been bothering the girl.

McCauleigh went upstairs.

Verona opened the door to see Luna Hare straightening her mask.  The girl was wearing a fashionable little tan leather jacket over a white dress made of a thick material with a leather belt, white lace-patterned tights, and white boots.  Her messenger bag hung to one side.  The slightly slanted black glass eyes of her rabbit mask betrayed nothing, but the disarray of her wispy white hair suggested she’d been running around a lot, or the wind had picked up.

Okay, those black glass eyes did betray something- she was avoiding looking at Verona’s face.

“Sorry,” Verona told her, as she let her in.

“That’s alright.  Ahem.”  Luna Hare stood straight, feet together, hands behind her back.  “I am here to inform you there is a council meeting planned for tonight.  In the interest of fairness between the three sides of Kennet, Louise Bayer has suggested we take turns hosting.  Tonight’s meeting will be taking place at the Arena in Kennet found.”

“Got it.  When?”

“Oh, I screwed up.  Shoot.  I’m sorry.  I rehearsed too.”

“It’s okay.  Just answer the question.”

“Thirty minutes but there’s going to be some leeway.”

“Since it’s hard to get around Kennet Found if someone’s not practiced, you mind staying around to show me the way?  You can have snacks and shitty hot chocolate if you want.”

“I’m supposed to see Lucy too.”

“Lucy’s at the hospital-”

“Thank you!”

“-and I’ll text her while I get you something hot and tasty.  But someone else is at the door, so if you’d step out of the way-”

“Sorry!”

Luna coughed as she slipped around Verona.  Verona glanced back and saw Luna dusting herself off.

“Sorry.  Bridge collapses make a lot of dust.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.  Thank you for everything you’ve been doing.”

Verona closed the door, willed the Demesne to adjust, and opened it again.

Mal was sitting on the stair.  Huddled.  She had a fresh, angry tattoo on the back of her neck.  It looked about as good as the kind of tattoo a complete amateur would make while trying to tattoo the back of their neck without the use of mirrors or assistance.  Which was a step up, honestly.

“Get in here, degenerate,” Verona said.

“I should get a key.”

“Not after you ate almost half of my snack supply.  Pay me back.”

“Later, later.  Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried about it.  But I’m not giving you a key until you pay me back for the snacks.”

“I will!  Don’t get the crotch of your jeans in a bunch.  Oh.  You’ve got someone here.”

Luna stood off to the side of the hallway, backed by a mural, the pigeon on one shoulder, the squirrel on the other.

“You can’t stay for long,” Verona said, as she got her phone out, unlocking it as she walked through to the kitchen.  “There’s a meeting later.”

“Oh yeah, I was supposed to mention that.”

Verona texted Lucy:

Verona:
out anytime soon???

Lucy
No.  Why?

Verona fired off a short version of the situation.  “She’s stuck at the hospital.  I think her mom’s trying to make a point.  You’re off the hook, Luna.  So let’s get you some hot chocolate and you can show us the way later, okay?”

“I can do that.”

“I can do that too,” Mallory said, “Hot chocolate yes.”

Verona held out a hand, palm up.

“Soon!  I’ll pay you back soon.”

“Then hot chocolate no.”

Verona set up the rig, moving copper pipes and reconnecting tubes.  She flicked the heating element, and it turned on.

“I feel bad,” Luna said.

“Don’t,” Verona told her.

McCauleigh entered, bumping shoulders with Mal in passing as a kind of greeting.

“Hot chocolate?” Verona offered.

“Sure.”

“You’re just twisting the knife, trying to make me feel bad,” Mal said.

“You know what feels bad?” Verona asked her, as she got the mix and milk out.

“Is this about the snack thing again?”

“Yeah!  Maybe if I repeat it another hundred times, you’ll get it?”

“I told you,” McCauleigh said.  “Her space, her stuff, her rules.”

“My money that I don’t have a ton of,” Verona said.  “I want to buy stuff for the Demesne.”

“Maybe buy clothes that aren’t covered in dust while you’re at it?” Mal suggested.

“I’ll wash them.  You do realize washing clothes is a thing people do?”

Luna perked up.  “Oh!  Thank you for reminding me.  Miss Hayward, third witch of Kennet, thank you for loaning me the clothes so I wouldn’t stand out in Kennet above.  It didn’t work very well, but I appreciate it.  I washed the clothes and folded the clothes, here you are.”

“Thank you.  You didn’t have to,” Verona said, taking the clothes that were more crisply folded than ninety-nine percent of anything she’d ever worn.  She put it aside to rub at her eyes.

“Are you crying?” Mal asked.

“No, I’ve got dust in my eyes.  McCauleigh, I know you can make this.  Can I leave you to it?  I’m going to get in a quick rinse before the council meeting.”

“You got it.”

Verona passed the job on to McCauleigh, went into the cupboard, and got out two bags of peanuts.  She slapped them down onto the counter, opened one, and portioned out a few for the squirrel.  “Squirrel…”

And in the ice box, some raspberries and trail mix.  “Pigeon…”

The two animals navigated to the end of the counter.

“Mal gets nothing until she pays me back.”

“You’re really being anal about this.”

“Pay me back,” Verona said.  “If you eat me out of some kind of snack and I tell a guest I have some, I get gainsaid.  Respect the space.  And the three of you?  Be good.”

“I’ll try,” Luna said, with earnest sincerity.

“Don’t bully her.”

“What, me?” Mal asked.  She threw an arm around Luna’s shoulders, then looked at the girl.  “Want a tattoo?”

“Be good!”

Verona, still wearing her coat, carrying her bag, went upstairs and pulled her boots off, emptying her various pockets of stuff, and put the bag aside.  She wore her coat into the shower, doing her best to believe that it would be hot water, this time around.  The water sputtered a bit, like it was really fighting to go one way or another, and then the stream came through.

She rinsed off, then, dripping, she disrobed and hung up everything, coat included, on the towel rack.  There was a slotted vent cover beneath it, and Verona stomped next to it.  “Dry.”

Hot air came out like the hot water did, struggling.

She showered, changed into fresh clothes, and then took a moment to stop, fingers combing through hair-

She’d really done a bad job of maintaining the messy french bob.  Slightly wavy strands were sticking out past the point she normally would’ve trimmed, or curled up and around a bit.

Clutching bunches of hair in between her fingers at the sides of her head, she sighed.

There was so much more to do.

She got her laptop out, trying to think if there was any homework she hadn’t already done with her mom earlier.  Lucy’s advice.  If Jasmine got stressed about what they were up to, then Lucy was right, it would be nice to have a way to deflect Jasmine if it got too focused.  Lucy was bound to end up pseudo-grounded, if not outright grounded.

There wasn’t homework, but there were messages from her mom.

Some possibilities.  Homeschooling possibilities.  Two families had kids Verona’s age and were open to including her in the homeschooling.  There was just no good way to imagine that not being horribly awkward and weird.  Worse than regular school, maybe.

The other possibility was her mom coming into school, going in, and talking to the faculty.  Trying to find a working solution, adjustments, accommodations.

But at the top of the list, the idea she’d skimmed by because it just sounded better, and she didn’t want to latch onto something and miss other possibilities: an online learning class.  All the classes were recorded.  Homework still had to be sent in on a schedule.

She put her imagination to the task, imagining how that might unfold.  She could do it.  But if there was another hell week like some of the ones they’d had, what would happen?  She’d really have to get ahead so she could afford to fall behind.  But there would be that flex.

The thing that nagged at her that was more of a problem was how lonely she could imagine it being.

If McCauleigh left after a week or two.  If Lucy was caught up in regular school and regular school friendships, and regular school boyfriend.  Lucy hanging out with Wallace, Jeremy, and Caroline.

But maybe that was the cost.  Maybe, if she made herself face that reality…

…She wanted to dive into this magical world.  Practice, Others, and all that.  And Lucy was a little more hands off.  Lucy liked straddling the line.

So maybe that was an irreconcilable difference.  And it sucked and it felt like she was passionate about this thing that Lucy only wanted one piece of.  And Avery would be away for a lot of these two years, going her own direction, going hard on this one topic, this one facet of practice she liked.  And that was cool, but again, it felt like a half share.

Was that just the cost of taking a different approach?

Her mom wanted her to think that she and Lucy would always be together, connected.  That at the very least, Verona’s bond with Lucy would persist.  Verona mentally included Avery in that.  They’d awoken together.

It was a leap.  A leap of faith.  That Verona might have to go chase something better, and risk leaving Lucy behind for a while.  Same call Avery had made, in a way.  Except she felt Avery’s absence.  She felt how dynamics had changed.  She felt like she wanted Avery around to talk to, poke at, annoy, laugh with.  It wasn’t a leap to imagine how it’d feel if she disconnected even more from Lucy.  Even if she believed her mom, that they’d reconnect after.

She’d written something on the wall in paint, and as she looked at herself in the scuffed full-body mirror, she could see the words behind herself, even if she couldn’t easily read them.

“Verona!” the shout came from downstairs.

“Is it an emergency?” Verona asked, bending down to type a quick ‘thanks will think’ to her mom.

“Yes!” Mal shouted.

If it wasn’t for the sense of urgency that conveyed, she would’ve agonized more about how to wrap up the email.  As it was, she added a quick, ‘love you’.

She turned and saw the words on the wall as she scooped up her spell cards.

FIGURE IT OUT.

She hurried downstairs.

It was meant for something else.  Words painted on the wall that she’d see whenever she was here, to keep her mind turned toward one of her big goals.  Dealing with Charles.

Figure it out.  Figure out how to stop him.

But the words applied to the other stuff.

“What’s the emergency?”

“Look!” Mal said, pointing.

A bag of peanuts was gone.  So were the squirrel and pigeon.

“Okay.  That’s not an emergency, is it?”

“You were so upset about me eating your snacks, I thought you’d care more about this!”

“Is there anything left over from the hot milk?”  Verona asked, craning her head to see the pot contents.  “So I can throw it at Mal?”

Luna, holding her mug in front of her mouth with both hands, mask slightly pushed up, shook her head.

“We should get going, huh?” Verona asked.  “You can bring that.”

“I’ll hang back,” McCauleigh said.  “Get packed.  I’ll make the move down to Kennet found later.”

“Might be better to do it before morning.  Luna, you think we can work out some specifics for her?  Something low-punishment, long-term?”

“Absolutely!  I don’t know exactly myself but I can ask Miss and visit the Records office.”

“At night?” Mal asked.

“It’s basically always night there,” Verona said.  “Or always that sleepy, world-hasn’t-quite-woken-up, or hasn’t-quite-fallen-asleep way.  You’ll see, if you’re coming.”

“Course.  I’m official-ish.  I’m here because it’s a bitch, coming over from my end of town.  If I come from the wrong direction, or stand by the wrong person, or if I make eye contact with certain assholes, there’s trouble.  It’s a hassle.”

“You could move to Kennet found,” Luna offered.

“What?  No.  I like my end of town.  Kennet below, whatever you want to call it.”

Verona got her stuff together, running upstairs to get her bag and check her laptop.  She pulled on her jacket, finding it only a bit damp.  The house was doing its work.

“Mal and Luna, out.  Don’t forget your masks-”

Luna shot Verona a look as she said that.

But Mal pulled one out of her back pocket.  Cloth, with drawings on it like her tattoos.

“Out, here we go,” Verona told them, pointing at the door and opening it as she went into her lab.  She picked a thermos out of her alchemy setup, triple checked the label, then turned to McCauleigh.  “You good?”

“Yeah.  For the next seven to ten days, at least.”

“We’ll talk, okay?”

McCauleigh nodded.

“Closing this door because I’m doing some alchemy.  Give me ten seconds.”

“Got it.”

Verona closed the door between the front hall and kitchen, then went to the front door, with Luna and Mal outside, Luna holding her mug.

“You’ve got-”

“One sec!”

She shut the door.

Opening the thermos, Verona let the vacuum hold sway, drawing the residual moisture out of her hair and coat.  She put the bottle of water aside, pulled on the cat mask, then opened the door.  “What?”

“Box, squirrel, pigeon.  The nut thieves, I might add,” Mal said.

Verona looked at the box on her doorstep, then the two assistants from Sootsleeves’ area, who were perched on the railing.  “That was fast.”

They didn’t respond.  So she bent down, opening the box, and she pulled out a dark gray sweater.  She held it up against her front.  The knit was thick, with some braids down the edges of the sleeves and body, but the wool was soft.

Verona stepped inside, pulled off her coat and striped sweater, then pulled on the new gray one.  It hugged the length of her body to upper-mid thigh, and fit her arms.

“Looks good,” McCauleigh said, leaning against the doorframe.

Mal pushed the front door more open to see.  “Sure.”

“Not my usual style.”

“You could wear that to a dinner at Musser’s if you wanted to,” McCauleigh said.  “Studs in your ears, fix up the hair.”

“Ehhh.  Yeah.  I don’t see myself doing that.  But I can wear it with other stuff, I think.”

“Makes you look more adult,” Mal said.  Luna nodded.

“That makes me like it a smidge less.  But I like it,” Verona said, poking her head out the door for the squirrel and pigeon.  “Good one.  You tipped the delivery?”

The pigeon nodded.

“Ask before doing that, next time, okay?  But good.  Expedient.”

The squirrel elbowed the pigeon, looking annoyed.

Verona pulled on her black dyed jacket, then got her bag, wearing the gray sweater.

“Lead the way, Luna.”

Luna led them over to the Arena, up some stairs, across a bridge, managing the low-key labyrinth that was Kennet Found.  People were out, and Verona ducked her head in acknowledgement of a woman that stood with a parasol, with gobbets, loops, and trailing streams of thick black ink pouring down onto her face and upper body.  It faded from her ground-length dress pretty quickly, creating an effect where the woman was pitch black and barely looked able to breathe on the upper third, inconsistently covered in ink at the middle third, and closer to pristine at the bottom.

There was a family that was out, ribbons wrapped around their heads, with a varying amount of ribbons tied to nearby posts, benches, and fences.  They stood there, bodies and heads cocked at awkward angles because of the tension and short lengths of some of the ribbons, the dad of the family holding a leash that was attached to a dog that had the same ribbon thing going on with its head and muzzle.  A ribbon tied its leg up while it peed- for the entire minute or two it took Verona, Mal, and Luna to approach and then walk down the rest of the bridge.

Others were more functional.  A man in a suit wore a mascot head that was several times too large, with arms, a back, and legs draping down from the back and sides of his body, the feet of the costume trailing behind him.  He wore it like a cape, open at the front, holding a phone inside the round and overlarge neckhole in the mascot head, talking about shipments.

And a boy with a large shoe over his head was delivering newspapers, tossing them onto lawns.  Mal broke into a run, running forward, and caught one paper out of the air.

The boy screeched to a stop.

“Don’t hassle the locals,” Verona said.

“It’s not a hassle, it’s a challenge,” Mal said.  She used the newspaper she now held to block and knock aside the next paper the boy threw, to replace the one she’d taken.

Verona jogged forward and stuck her foot out, booting Mal lightly in the hip- not so hard it counted as violence.

Mal retaliated, wrestling a bit, which also didn’t count one hundred percent as violence, but the distraction was enough for the boy to get a paper past Mal and over the fence.

Verona hooked a finger through one of Mal’s belt loops and hauled back to keep Mal from hurdling the fence to get that paper too.  “Come on.  Places to be.”

Verona gave the boy a wave.  “Sorry for my friend!”

He waved back.

“Only one paper for me, still!” Luna called out.

He waved back again, then pedaled off very hard, like he was trying to catch up.

“Only one?” Verona asked.

“He keeps leaving two or three.”

“Does he like you, bunny girl?” Mal asked.

“Oh!  I don’t know,” Luna replied.

“You can do better than a boy with a shoe for a head,” Mal said.

“On his head, not for a head.  I think it’s an athletic look,” Luna said.  “But it was very annoying that he kept leaving so many papers.  I tried to leave some at places where I thought people might want them, but I’m glad he stopped when I told him to stop.”

“He’ll cringe when thinking about that for the next twenty years,” Mal said.

Verona nodded.  She hadn’t even thought the reason he’d be biking so hard or leaving papers would be because of any romantic inclination, but she could see that happening.

“No!  I hope not,” Luna said.

“He’ll be an old man, and on his deathbed, he’ll think of the doofy move he pulled with the rabbit masked girl.”

“I don’t want that!” Luna said, sounding distressed.

“It’s fine,” Verona said.  “They don’t age much anyway, unless they want to.”

“That’s worse,” Mal pointed out.

“I’ll talk to him,” Luna resolved.  “It was very doofy, but I don’t want him to feel bad.”

“Part of being young,” Verona said.  “Gotta laugh.  Take it easy, can’t care too much.  Caring too much is a fast way to be miserable.”

“Look at you, trying to sound adult, miss fourteen year old,” Mal said, poking Verona in the side of the stomach, stopping short only because of the protections of Kennet found.  She settled for rubbing Verona’s head instead, which made Verona struggle to push her away.

They stopped at a gate with a puzzle.

“Blocking off the Arena?”  Verona asked, frowning.

“Miss put the paperwork through earlier.  You can cordon off areas to certain people and groups.  Or set difficulty stages for entry.  There’s one for the book club my neighbors hold, pretty easy, but you have to have read the book to solve the word game,” Luna explained.

She turned dials that each had a series of symbols on them.  Verona recognized them- they were residents of Kennet.  Three bars, each with a series of dials encircling them, white with the symbols carved out of them and inlaid with slate.  Calling for a combination.  Luna gave one whole bar of dials a spin while checking another.

“I hope Stew Mullen has a guide,” Mal muttered.

Verona reached past Luna, adjusted some dials, and set one row.  One leg of the three-pronged council table.  Birdcage for Rook, pair of black eyes stacked atop one another for Matthew, candle for Edith, kissing skulls for the ghouls.

She solved the other branches too.  Bird, book, fist, toad.

Cat, deer, fox, crying eye.

“I’d hope people can solve this,” Verona said, before letting the bars come apart where they’d interlocked, and pushing things open.

“It’s not meant to be hard.  But you’d be surprised.  A lot of people don’t know what you’re all up to or what you’re about.  It’s part of why it’s nice we’re hosting this time,” Luna said.

The Arena back in Kennet above was ordinary, bland, a box with parking lots on either side and a road on the one side.  Trees around the back lot and road.  Important.

The Arena in Kennet below was burned, ruined, still scarred from the Carmine Contest.  It burned forever, and a tree that had grown out of part of it was part of that perpetual burning.

Here, the trees grew up and into the walls, hoisting it partially up.  The individual fragments of the building were knit together by haphazard construction and reaching branches.  The central ‘arena’, an iceless rink, was in plain view as they approached.  A triangular table had been placed at the depression.

Miss stood large in the midst of it, but as they got closer, Miss shrunk, proportionately.  She was putting everything in order.  Rook, the Bitter Street Witch, Stew, and the Vice Principal sat already.  Rook had her usual mask at her lower face, the Bitter Street Witch sat forward, a heavy habit almost like a nun’s hiding her face.  Stew had screwed a metal plate with a cutting edge terminating at the bottom to his face.  The Vice Principal was dressed like a queen, a hard white mask over her face painted with a J and a heart at each corner.

As they passed under, Verona looked up at the tons of concrete and ragged-edged building chunks that were suspended in the air by branches, bridges, and pillars.

“People are still arriving,” Miss said.  “Is Lucy coming?”

“No.  Family stuff.  She got hurt fighting Anthem.”

“I heard.  Not too badly, I hope?”

“Don’t think.  But it’s spooked her mom.  Which sucks.”

“It does.  Are we fine to continue without her?  Would she be offended?”

“Better be fine to continue, after we came all this way,” the Vice Principal said.

“It’s fine.  I checked,” Verona said.

“Alright,” Miss replied.

One side of the table for each of the factions of Kennet.  Mallory sat at the corner between the ‘human’ side and Kennet below.

Verona stood by her chair without sitting.  At the human side of Kennet.

She stood there, watching people settle in, listening as Mallory tried to be political with the different faction leaders of Kennet below, and watched as Luna talked with Miss, intently taking notes.

Figure it out.

The rest arrived.  It wasn’t a smooth trickling in.  A bunch came at once, and then there were stragglers.  The goblins arrived a group, the Dog Tags not far behind.  Matthew came in with Louise.

The Turtle Queen came in, and sat by Rook and Reggie.

Guilherme, Melissa, and Bracken came in, talking.  That was interesting.

Alpeana was alone.  Verona raised a hand in greeting, and Alpeana approached, matted, oily black hair wrapped around her face.

“Need something, lassie?” Alpeana asked.

“Just saying hi.  Doing okay?”

“I’m daein’ braw.  Our guests hae helped wi’ meetin’ quota.”

“Good.  Funny how that works, isn’t it?  Certain members of us end up in the hospital, others thrive in the tough times.”

As if to go along with that, Verona saw the ghouls approaching.

“Aye, ah peeked in ‘n it seemed she wis fine, lass.  They’re juis’ bein’ thorough.”

“Good.  I’m glad.  Thanks for looking in.”

“Aye.  Ah’m goin’ tae go set myself down.  I’ve a long nicht ahead o’ me.”

“Sure thing.  If you ever need anything, or if you’re running low on anything…”

“Aye, you’re fine lass.”

Two foundlings came over, bringing a broken down, bleeding movie projector.  They set it under the table, nodded to Miss, and then left.

Queen Sootsleeves came in on a horse, and stopped off to one side of Miss.  The girl with numbers in her eyes did too.  Luna sat at the end of that side of the table, hands in her lap, looking like she wished someone was closer that she could talk to.  Nibble and Chloe struck up a conversation, at least.

The projector and attached speaker abruptly started up with a squeal and a cough of blood, then cast its light onto the high-backed chair it had been placed in front of.  It was slightly off, so bloody spider legs and one blood-drenched arm with bones sticking out of various wounds along its length reached out to drag it five or so degrees clockwise, so it faced the chair fully.

Which provided a shadow of Montague that flickered and changed, as Montague was likely to do.

Setting a high bar, Miss, for the inclusion of all our people.

Except the seat that was for Verona was on the human side, and that was a whole other leap she hadn’t braced herself to take.  One she hadn’t completely divorced herself from, either.

Cig’s cigarette had appeared in an ashtray near Montague while Verona wasn’t looking.

And Tashlit approached, not wearing a mask- but the loose, limp, torn skin she wore counted enough, Verona supposed.

Verona tried not to tense or react, and offered a half smile.

Tashlit sat next to Verona’s chair.  She gestured.

“Doing okay.  You?”

Tashlit shrugged.  Then she reached into her overlarge coat and pulled out a little flower in a little jar.

“Oh hey.  Good memory,” Verona said.  While they’d gone to the beach, they’d met a nature spirit, and while meeting that spirit, Verona had remarked on a flower just like this.

Tashlit held up four fingers, but it was hard to immediately tell with how the loose skin strung between them.

“Four?  Oh, you found four of these?”

Tashlit nodded, then pointed at Verona, then made a shape, palms upright, fingers bent to forty-five degree angles.

“Me, house?  Oh, housewarming gift?”

Tashlit nodded.

“Thank you.  Garden or indoors, do you think?”

Tashlit shrugged, then touched her wrist, before pointing to the trees that were losing leaves.

“Yeah.  I guess it depends on when I want to have ’em.  Next spring or all winter.  Gotta be easier to keep plants alive in a Demesne, huh?”

Tashlit nodded.

“Thank you.”

Tashlit put out a fist, and let it rest against Verona’s upper arm.  Not all that far from where Kittycough had braced one knife-wielding arm.  Completely different intents, though.

That fist remained there, pressing.

“For sure, absolutely,” Verona replied, quiet.  “I’m not angry, you know.  Just… bummed, a bit.”

Tashlit nodded.  She pointed at herself.

“You too?  Even though you-” Verona stopped short.  She didn’t want to start anything.

But Tashlit nodded.

She didn’t get it, but okay.

Verona wanted to say something, but it was tricky to.  To try to describe to Tashlit what she’d missed out on, and how the Demesne was coming together.  Or everything else.

“Any chance you can pay a visit to Lucy?  Give her a mend?”

Tashlit gestured extensively.  In the background, everyone got settled in.

Verona followed the gestures, but she kinda figured it out a third of the way through, and then didn’t comment until Tashlit was done, gathering up the nuance.

“Let’s maybe not tell Jasmine that.”

Tashlit nodded.

Taking Lucy to the hospital was a good instinct as a mom and a caring parent, but it also ties our hands a bit.  Any bumps, scrapes, or soreness are validated by Innocents now.  Which makes healing harder.

Verona, arms folded over the high back of her chair, chin on arms, watched as everything got wrapped up, people circling around the table to get to their seats.

There wasn’t a seat meant for Edith, and Edith didn’t make an appearance.

Verona was one of the last to sit.  Reluctantly.  She pulled her seat in, then brought her legs up onto the seat.

There was one chair empty to her left.  Lucy’s.  And to her right, she supposed, would be Avery, but it was Tashlit instead.

“It’s been a little while,” Miss said.  “For me especially.”

“We’re glad to have you back,” Louise said.  “I hope I didn’t put you on the spot with the suggestion to take turns.”

“No.  But excuse any roughness around the edges.”

“Roughness around the edges can have its upsides,” the Bitter Street Witch said.  “But I have to ask.  Isn’t it still wartime?”

Rook was the one who answered.  “It is.  But the enemy’s back is broken, they’re leaderless, and even while we’re meeting here, they’re meeting at the cabins.”

“Broken for good?” the Vice Principal asked.

“That depends,” Rook said.

“Musser said he’d be back after three days.  They could rally behind him.  Or things could go another way,” Miss said.  “Which is part of the reason for tonight’s discussion, I think?”

She looked to Louise.

“I thought we should at least all talk,” Louise said.  “The thing I hear most is that people want to weave into things more.  That we’ve… not done very well, when pieces were missing.  Trying to create an Other-facing version of Ken, then failing, because the Others weren’t interacting enough with the people.”

Verona nodded.

“Meeting and talking felt like it was a step in the right direction,” Louise said.  Her eyebrows drew together at the middle, raising up at the same time.  “I’ve been talking to the parents a lot.  Trying to do that.  I don’t have a lot of special skills, but I think I can at least share what I’ve figured out and seen.”

The parents.

Lucy’s mom and Avery’s parents.

Verona closed her eyes for a moment, collecting herself, then opened them.

“What’s the word on Lucy?” Matthew asked.  He’d looked at Verona as he asked.

“Thanks for worrying but I do think she’s okay.  I’ll let you all know if she’s not.  For the time being, let’s let her mend, I’ll try to pick up some of the slack.”

“You really shouldn’t have to,” Matthew said.

“I want to,” Verona told him.

“Alright.  I know better than to argue.”

“Any points to raise, any thoughts, comments, things we should know?” Miss asked.  “Before we discuss the current crisis, our straggler practitioners, and Musser’s return?”

Verona had said her piece, offering to take up the slack.  Ideal world, she’d move over to online courses, and she could shift her focus around some.

Toadswallow was talking about the Market, and the goblins who’d come in and were stranded.  Verona listened with half an ear.

Figure it out.

Approaching things from different angles.  School, life.

Rook sat at Miss’s left side, dressed in black, the Turtle Queen next to her.  And Luna Hare was dressed in white, far off to the right.

Verona frowned.

Not that configuration, obviously, but…

Avery faced the overlapping, bleating, kaleidoscope hellscape of braying, eating, shitting, sleeping, and fucking goats, tense, her eyes on the surroundings, but her focus on Thea.  Avery’s bracelet ticked, telling her Thea was standing off to her side, studying her.  Contemplating options.

“I’d be fully in my rights,” Thea told her.

Avery shook her head slightly.  Don’t.

“Recoup what I lost.  Something I lost that you took for your own purposes.  Don’t think I haven’t heard what happened in your hometown.”

“This is a trap.  The Heroic goat,” Avery said.

“Heroic?”

Avery shrugged.

“Makes sense.  I’ve visited realms that looked like this.”

“The Driscolls work with this stuff.  Historians.  Studying places and their histories, the patterns that unfold over whole areas…” Avery said.

“Yes.  I’ve talked to a few of them.”

Avery nodded a bit to herself.  She turned to face Thea head on.  They were separated by the ten feet of breadth of the horn they were standing on.  A human Snowdrop clung to Avery’s side, head at Avery’s armpit, tense.

“It’s a trap,” Avery repeated.  “Infighting.”

“And explosive, expansive power.”

“Sure.  That too, I guess.”

“Something like this can’t be contained.  It’s meant to burst whatever practice tries to tap it at the seams.”

“Hmm,” Avery said.  “Sure?  I can see it.”

“I think I could harness it.”

“What if that’s the trap?  I mean, he told me to investigate.  What he wants, I think, is to find out how powerful this is, and then we get caught up in fighting each other over it, and whoever’s strong enough to end up with the goat then tries to use it…”

“And it works super well.  No problems,” Snowdrop threw in.

“It works too well, no problems except for total disaster, I bet,” Avery said.

Thea turned away from Avery, then started walking down the length of the horn.

“Where are you going?”

“We’re in a war.  Let’s consider all the options.  We’re playing a rigged game,” Thea said.  “Let’s avoid making too many assumptions.  What if the game isn’t rigged against us?”

“I don’t think this is a game,” Avery said, following.  “I deal with a lot of game-y sort of stuff with my practice.  Puzzles, worlds with their own rulesets.  I don’t think this is a game.”

“It’s his game.  The Carmine’s,” Thea said.  As she led the way into the bleating kaleidoscope, things were shifting and moving, taking on other perspectives.

“Let’s say it is,” Avery said.  “What do we gain by calling it a game?”

“When you’re playing a game, you at least know there’s a designer.  Someone with intentions.  A vision,” Thea said.

“I think he’s just an asshole, and this is a way to poke fun at practitioners who take bloodline too seriously.  Like, ha-ha, you’re no better than goats.”

“Goats are pretty awful,” Snowdrop said.

“Hey, I don’t need to worry about you getting sucked into the Alcazar, do I?” Avery asked.

“Why would I feel this way about something that can eat anything, ugly-cute, badass in an awful way?”

“Be careful,” Avery urged.

“You could be right about that, it doesn’t make what I’m saying wrong,” Thea said.  “But if you can see the vision that underpins a whole Creation-”

“A goat,” Avery pointed out.

“-you can find bias.  Bias is weakness,” Thea said, her voice echoing.

The spiraling horn they were walking along was constructed in a way that it had three faces, and a vague rounded-triangular shape, but it narrowed and as they got further along, the sides of the triangle rounded off and became one surface.  Avery walked on one angle, Thea on another, almost below Avery and to the right, and Snowdrop below Avery and to the left, perpendicular, hand reaching up and out, gripping Avery’s fingers instead of Avery’s hand.

With this descent deeper into the goat, the kaleidoscope faded out in favor of darkness, and a goat fetus swelled out of that darkness, planet-sized, curled into a rough ball shape, rotating with the tip of the horn as the apparent point of rotation.

Every few paces seemed to advance that goat a life stage.  Birth, a light-speed rush through a birthing canal.  The newly born goat’s eye opened and golden light flooded out.

Avery sighed, annoyed and worried.

The goat aged.  Adolescent, legs moving as if it was bounding, moving faster, faster-

Until it collided with another goat.  Headbutts.  Interaction.  Winning consistently.  It claimed its heroic prize.

And Thea kept walking closer to the nexus point, while that scene played out, a goat that took up most of the sky and space around and in front of Avery ramming another goat… just not head to head.  Other way around.

The goat bleated, tongue sticking out, and the bleat echoed across infinity.

The goat aged further, more mates, more headbutts.

Swords that looked suspiciously like goat horns, hearts that looked like goat heads with the horns curving up and in and down… they appeared orbiting the scene, each like a moon against the night sky, in how they stood out from darkness, and in scale.  They collected, forming constellations.

And with little warning, the goat was slammed into a stump.  Its throat was cut.  Its blood collected as it thrashed.

A massive goat skull appeared at another point in orbit around the scene, the stump forming a perfect circle with the goat thrashing atop it, legs kicking, invisible hands holding the head steady, holding the collection vessel for the blood.

That vessel overflowed, and the blood stretched across the darkness.  The ‘moons’ in orbit – sword-horn, head-heart, and the skull fixed at cardinal north, they became black against the bloody backdrop.

And as the swords circled around, they passed the skull, cutting an invisible throat.  Skulls were bone and the liquid that flowed was bone white.

Avery squinted into the brightness of that white.

“What are you doing, Thea?”

“Investigating.”

“I think we figured it out.”

“I’d like to get to the heart of this.  You can go back.”

“I don’t think I will.  We’re meant to pair up and stay together, right?  Splitting up feels dumb.  And I have to worry that you’d lure me in deep and then do something to get rid of me.”

Thea turned.  Her eyes narrowed.  “Guilty conscience?”

“Actually, no.”

“Too bad.”

The central goat was being born again, but it was framed by more at the edges, each subset of scenes playing out in a sequence and pattern that tied into the victories, matings, and, inevitably, the slaughters and sacrifices.

Different sorts of sacrifice became different tiers- at the highest, a practitioner killed a goat for a purpose- and it seemed like a goat that brought a lot of different aspects and constellations into alignment.  When the skull appeared, it was larger, wrapped in thorny vines, and had a sword thrust through the brow.  A quintet of smaller goat skulls were arranged beneath its pointed nose.

Avery shook her head slightly.

The horn became so narrow that she had to place the heel of one foot in front of the toe of the other.

Thea drew a piece of chalk from her pocket.

“Are you planning on doing practice?  Making changes?” Avery asked.

“It’s possible.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“Murrell’s Yoke is in place.  That’s external-contextual.  Something internal here could form a second point.  Then a mark on the goat itself.  The sacrum makes sense.  Three points of structure.”

“Hmmmm,” Avery drew out the sound, looking around.

Snowdrop was doing a tightrope walk along the horn directly beneath Avery, shoes periodically touching the edges of Avery’s, helping to balance on a surface about a half-inch across.

Thea walked with a decent amount of confidence.

The tightope they walked was spiraling, and it remained narrow, but it had transitioned from dark brown to whitish, slick.

An umbilical cord.

The fetal goat before them was so large Avery could crane her head all the way back and not see the upper extent, or do the same looking to either side, or down.

And peering at the flesh of the goat, she could see the interlocking mesh of pale, fetal goats, all the way back to a time when its ancestors preceded goats in evolution and definition.

This was so obnoxious, and worrying.

The umbilical cord squished underfoot, trailing the fifty or so feet ahead, where it opened up and met the belly of the goat.  Avery felt like she might have fallen, but whenever it squished under her weight, Snowdrop’s feet were solid on the other side.  Avery moved her foot forward, Snowdrop carefully mirrored her, and they walked forward, almost like Avery was walking on a mirror, but it was very important that the underside of her reflection’s foot was beneath her foot, or she’d fall through.

Thea reached out with a piece of chalk.  Avery saw things move.

“Wait,” Avery said.  Then when Thea didn’t stop, she raised her voice.  “Wait!”

It sounded like she was underwater.  She realized she was in the womb with the goat.

“Why wait?” Thea asked.

“Because, well, first of all, there’s no rush.”

“If we dally, and they come in after us-”

“Would be Odis.”

“Yes.  But it’s best to travel in pairs, so he could bring anyone.  Would you trust all of them to see this wellspring of potential power and not covet it?”

“I mean, considering I don’t trust you to see this and not want it…”

Thea turned.  “I actually have the capacity to wield, contain, and channel it.  I don’t think the rest do.  Not even Odis, and he taught me.  They’d try, but I don’t think they could.”

“Maybe not.”

“I’m not an idiot.  I know you don’t like me, I know you don’t approve of my methods.  Maybe you think I’m scary.  But I’m not an idiot.  I’ve put a lot of time into deciphering whole worlds worth of power and complexity.  I’ve spent years planning on how to use my battery.  Which was only partially full.  I could have filled it, and I had plans on how to channel it when I used it.”

“Okay, well, not-idiot,” Avery said.  “Maybe that’s true-”

“It is.”

“But I’m standing about ten paces behind you, and I can see parts of this you can’t, because you’re close enough to draw on the belly of the heroic goat fetus.”

“What are you seeing?”

“Moon-sized skulls, swords, and hearts.  Trade places with me?”

“Do you want it for yourself?”

“Not in the slightest.  This feels like a trap on the Carmine’s part, I only want to demonstrate.”

Thea frowned.  Then she asked, “Is this a trap on your part?  To eject me from the Alcazar?  Anything like that?”

“No.  I’ll make you a deal.  Don’t do anything brash, and I won’t try to force you out without your agreement.”

“Fine.  I wasn’t intending to do anything brash anyway.”

Thea walked down the length of the umbilical cord, hopping to get past where Snowdrop and Avery’s feet were taking up a portion.  Avery, meanwhile, walked closer.

She pulled a marker out of her pocket.

Positions reversed, she brought the marker closer.

And stopped, about a half-foot away from the belly.  It moved slightly, so she didn’t want to risk getting closer.

She had to lean back all the way to see it.

The ‘moons’, or whatever the markers of the goat’s heroic pattern were called.  They moved as her permanent marker got closer.  Like shadows cast from the marker along the length of the fetal goat’s body.  Thorn-wrapped skull, horn-blade, heart that was also a goat head.

She moved it around, letting Thea see.  Getting within a half-foot, those vast, pale shadows almost met one another.

If she’d made contact, they’d touch where whatever she was holding touched… and something.

“See?” Avery asked.

“No,” Snowdrop said.

“Yes,” Thea replied.

“I think if this is our goat, surrounded by and empowered by the pattern…” Avery said.  She raised a hand and slowly moved it, in the same way she’d tap and drag on her phone.  The goat transitioned to another life phase, swiftly moving past birth to being a kid.  Avery was glad to not be underwater in embryonic fluid anymore.  She moved the marker.  The shadows were steely this time.  “It’s like a dam.  A very thin layer of goat between us and… power, I guess.”

“It’s triggered by sacrifice.  Me drawing runes doesn’t sacrifice it.”

“But I think it wants to be sacrificed, in a way,” Avery replied.  “What if your chalk breaks the skin, and that’s enough?”

“What if it doesn’t, and I can secure it from harming others, while also benefiting?”

“Let’s ask the council.”

“They’d want to portion it out.”

“Which is a problem.  We should want to find a way to deal with the goat that has nothing to do with sacrifice or power or splitting anything up.  But let’s ask.  Let’s try.”

Thea looked pissed.

She really wanted this.

Avery felt a chill as Thea’s eyes roved over her.

Hate.  It was well hidden, but it came through.  Avery wondered if Thea was considering attacking her now.

Or killing her now.

“My best friend, she betrayed me,” Avery said.

She wasn’t sure why this was what she’d gone to.

“We were super close, and then she turned around and joined another sports team.  And played against me.  And treated me like shit.”

“Do you think this is where we bond?” Thea asked.  “I’m insulted.  I’ve wanted to kill you ever since you took my battery, but you’ve really managed to rub salt into that particular wound, just now.”

“I dunno!” Avery raised her voice.  “I’m fourteen, we’re inside a heroic goat, surrounded by a huge celestial pattern of goat bloodline, you’re scary, and I’m- I’m tired!  I’m just trying to keep everything from being a huge dumpster fire.”

“Dumpster fires are such a waste,” Snowdrop echoed.

“Fuck.  I’m not going to hurt you, I can’t hurt you.  Odis made me swear.”

“If you sacrifice that goat, accidentally or actually, you hurt all of us, I’m like, let’s say ninety nine percent sure.”

Thea looked more upset after hearing Avery say that.

“What?” Avery asked.

“I just told you about an oath I swore, and now you’re trying to use it to corner me?”

“What?  No.  Seriously, no.  That wasn’t my intention.  I’m just- my parents just became Aware over last weekend, and I’d really rather not have someone try to explain to them that their daughter died inside a goat.  This is dangerous, I really truly believe that.”

“This is my area of expertise, Avery.  I… I understand this.  I can decipher ninety-five percent of it, I’d say.  Given time to put some practice into effect-”

“Dangerous,” Avery cut in.

“I can cover the other five percent.”

“And it’s also my job!  Being in strange places where we don’t know all the rules.  I run paths, there’s tons of stuff I’ve gone at hard, that’s reckless and dangerous and crazy.  And with all that, this time, I’ve got a gut feeling about that five percent you’re talking about, and I’m saying hell no.”

“Hell yes,” Snowdrop said, below Avery.

“Hell no,” Avery repeated, tense, facing Thea down.

“I don’t think you have any idea how annoying they’ll be about this,” Thea said.

“I know they’ll be annoying, but you know what’s way more annoying?  Dying inside a stupid heroic goat as it’s sacrificed.”

Thea shook her head.  Then she turned, walking back down the horn, away from the nexus of the Alcazar.

Through the pattern, through stages of life, through to the kaleidoscope.  Around to calmer pastures.  Avery could only relax as they passed through the doors.  She’d been focused like she was on a sports field, ready to block Thea if Thea tried something.  Snowdrop was emulating her, ready to help block.

But Thea left and Avery followed.

“And?” Zed asked, over the call.

Avery groaned.

Thea sat down heavily, shaking her head.  She put an elbow on her knee and three fingers at the side of her head.  “So what do we tell them?”

Avery groaned again.  Snowdrop groaned as well, for effect.

“Do we need to worry?” Zed asked.

“Cut straight to it,” Ann said.

“It’s big,” Avery said, listless, a bit defeated.  “It’s strong.  Too strong.”

“Why is a goat ‘too strong’?” Deb asked.

“It gets complicated.  Let’s just say it’s too strong, anyone who sacrifices it is inviting disaster, and leave it at that?  Send it to a pasture to go live a happy goat life.”

“We paid for the contractor’s help,” Ann said, indicating Zed.  “We should get all the information so we know what to do with it.”

Avery groaned again.

“Don’t be immature,” Deb said.

Avery wanted to bang her head against a wall.

“It’s Heroic,” Thea said.  “Historic, I don’t know the particulars of that branch of practice.”

“Nobody here does, that’s why it was sent here, I think,” Avery said.

“A heroic goat?” Zed asked, over the laptop.

“With a bloodline going back to the beginning of mammals, supposedly, with a penchant for dramatic deaths,” Avery said.

Thea explained, “A proportion of litters sired or birthed, battles won, and sacrifices chasing their way down the bloodline.  One died to give sustenance to a dragon that would’ve died otherwise, one died for a practitioner to lay a notable curse that made history, one died and was served to appease a leader of an army of men on horseback, and that feast ended in slaughter.”

“You caught all that?” Avery asked.  “Looked like a jumble.”

“I told you, this is my field of expertise,” Thea said.  She used her Sight and her eyes became spinning orbs carved with maps for a moment.  She closed her eyes for a second, then shook her head.  “I wanted to secure a binding while we were inside.  She said no.”

“Too dangerous, too fragile, the pattern in it means it’s meant to die and-”

“And you think chalk is going to sacrifice it?  I disagree but here we are,” Thea said, sounding tired.

Avery felt tired for other reasons.  She watched as the Alcazar came apart and returned to being a goat.

“It might risk sacrificing it,” Avery said.  “Maybe it has an allergy-”

“To chalk?”

“To something.  I dunno!  But let’s not risk it and let’s not find out!”

The goat bleated.

If she never heard another bleat for the rest of her life…

“I’m pretty capable at managing large quantities of power,” Deb said.  “I navigate Storms.”

Avery slumped forward.  Snowdrop rubbed her back.

“I tried to make the argument to Avery,” Thea said.  “That it’s possible this isn’t a trap meant for us, but a tool handed to us to use against Musser by one of Musser’s enemies.”

“Is it, or do you just really want that to be true?” Odis asked.

“Can we rule it out?” Thea asked.

“Had Franky succeeded in laying her curse, it would have ruined us.”

“Only some of us,” Thea muttered.

“Enough of us,” Ann retorted, archly, as one of the people who would’ve been hit by the curse.

“In the interest of laying everything out on the table, before the conversation gets too far along,” Nicole Scobie interjected, “I have some experience in handling tainted and dangerous farm animals.”

The Abyssal cow, right.

“Oh do shut up,” Ann said.

“Oh, do fuck yourself, Ann.  I’m saying.  Do what you want with that information.”

“Would you swear not to sacrifice or kill it?” Avery asked.

“I wouldn’t rule anything out, in case we found ourselves-”

Avery put her face into her hands.

“You’re so transparent,” Deb told Nicole.

“I’m being forthright, and being transparent is a part of that!  Laying it on the table.  I’m not making demands-”

“You want to take it so you can figure out how to sacrifice it, don’t you?” Deb asked.

“Enough,” Ann said.  “As leader of this group-”

“Acting leader,” Avery said.  “Self-imposed.”

“As the closest thing we have to a leader-”

Nicole scoffed audibly.

“Raising other possibilities, I could cast it down to the Abyss.”

Odis’s cane rapped on the floor, interrupting the five different people who looked ready to say something.  “I do recall a conversation years ago…”

“On with it, Odis, please,” Ann said, impatient.

“…That you said that it was one of the oldest forms of sacrifice.  To cast a person down to the Abyss.”

“Don’t you get corresponding power and influence for what you cast down?” Thea asked.

Ann made a dismissive gesture.  “Not our foremost concern.  It’s also one of the most robust, safest mechanisms for removing problems.  Even the most powerful and darkest forces can be cast down and secured in cthonic depths.”

“To clarify, do begrudge an old man…” Odis trailing off.

“Don’t even pretend you’re some doddering old fool now,” Ann said.

“…You want to sacrifice the creature which is allegedly dangerous to sacrifice, to the Abyss?”

“I’m raising the topic for discussion.”

“And how are we supposed to discuss?” Thea asked.  “You’re the expert.  You know the best questions to ask and the answers.”

“It would be somewhat one-sided but I can see it being productive.”

“Put it out to pasture to live a long and boring life,” Avery said.  “Zed?  Is that doable?”

“Even in Heroic bloodlines, not every Hero does something.  Usually there’s some rationale.”

“Right.”

“It’s possible.  But the universe has a sense of humor.  It could find a way.”

“But it’s safer, right?”

“Probably.  Let me research.”

“Rather than a pasture, I could devote space on my property,” Nicole ventured.  “More secure against wolves and things.”

“How far away would its pen be from the malign and dangerous Abyssal cow?” Odis asked.

“Other end of the barn.”

Thea was sitting on the other side of the room- the room was long and narrow, and Thea and Avery were at the shorter distance from one another.  Thea looked at Avery, palms up, the light gone from her eyes, as if to gesture what did you think would happen?

“Woah!” Justin Childs raised his voice.

Heads turned to him, followed his gaze-

And shouts overlapped.

Franky stood by the goat, knife in hand.

“Franky,” Avery said.  “What the hell?”

“I thought, instead of some ritual sacrifice, why not just kill it, stop the conversation there?”

“That would count as a sacrifice,” Thea said, before amending, “probably.”

“Disastrously, if so,” Ann said.  “Put the knife aside, step away from the goat.”

“I thought it would be like a computer.  Unplug it, disconnect it from the system… virus can’t spread.”

“I think you’re a fantastic engineer, Franky,” Avery said.  “Brilliant, even.”

“Thank you.”

“But I don’t think you’re a very good practitioner.  No offense.”

“You guys didn’t want me to learn anything, so I didn’t, and now I’m being blamed-”

“Not blaming!” Avery interjected.  “Just… let’s go easy with the hero goat bomb.”

Franky lifted her hands, knife still held in one, and backed away from the goat.

Avery and Thea had reacted in the same moment, with the same sort of stark alarm.  Thea looked annoyed by that fact.

But Franky’s attempt had dashed cold water over the arguments.

Turning this away from a ‘me’ thing for most of the people present to a ‘what if someone else…’, maybe.

Avery sat, and Snowdrop, in opossum form, climbed into her lap.  She gave Snowdrop a scratch.

She thought about the conversation with her dad, and about the questions of morality, and Odis, and… fuck.

She hated to even ask, but… “What if this isn’t the only one?  Should we warn people?”

“It might be worth doing,” Zed said, over the call.  “I can reach out.”

“If we’re reaching out,” Ann said.  “Who are we reaching out to?”

Avery hated the answer she felt compelled to give.

Lucy groaned, trying to writhe in pain only to find that made it worse.

“Oh honey,” her mom said.  “Aches and pains?”

“I feel like I have a whole-body bruise.  Even in the bones,” Lucy said, as she lay in her bed.  She’d just woken up and found her body completely uncooperative.

“I’ll get some ice.  I hope you realize, pain is the body’s way of telling us… don’t do that.”

Lucy could hear her mom’s footsteps in the hallway, even without her implement.

Yeah, her mom wasn’t especially keen on her having fought Anthem.  Or America.  Or Slaygarrrrr Who Slavishly Slays.

She’d hoped, somewhere deep down inside, that she could do a good enough job that her mom would turn around and say she felt more confident than before.

Which, in retrospect, was really similar to how Lucy had felt when she’d gotten the guitar but was only in the beginning stages of figuring out hand posture and tuning.  She’d hoped, deep down, that she would have natural ability, especially with the earring.  She could visualize that so well, so clearly, the notes just coming, her hands cooperating…

She was bad.  Improving, but bad.

She tried to move and her shoulder just refused to move the attached arm.

“Some light painkillers.  Some water,” her mom said, as she put things on the bedside table.  “And an ice pack.  Brace yourself.”

The ice pack was wrapped in something, but Lucy still winced, writhing a bit more.

“What’s the worst spot?”

Lucy twisted, moving a hand as best as she could to point.  Her mom put it down on the back of her shoulder.

“Up slightly… thanks.  I guess.  Who came up with that?  Ice on an injury?  Why?”

“It’s usually Booker who got philosophical while under the weather,” her mom said.

Lucy lay face down in bed, position awkward, unwilling to move much.  The parts of her that weren’t hurt were just overtired.  She’d pulled heavily on her Self too.

Lying there, finally comfortable, Lucy came to a grim realization.

“I need to pee.”

“Then you’ll need to get up.”

“I don’t want to move.”

“And I don’t have the things I’d use for a patient in your condition, so get up.  Do you need help?”

“So much help.  I’m sorry.”

“You’re a lot like Booker was.  He apologized and went through stages of grief and remorse after some of the parties he went to.”

Lucy groaned, long and loud, as her mom helped her up to a sitting position, and provided the water and painkillers.  When Lucy put the glass down, her mom helped steady her as she stood.

It was mostly the Self drain, she imagined.  It turned every bump into a bruise and every bruise into something disabling.

Lucy made her way to the bathroom, and her mom was waiting for her when she got out.

They were halfway back to Lucy’s room when the phone rang.

“Go.  Get it.  I’ll hobble.”

“Don’t fall.”

“Good plan,” Lucy said.

Her mom went to the master bedroom to answer the phone, and Lucy hobbled.  She hadn’t put the earring on, still, so she couldn’t overhear the other end of the conversation.  Just her mom’s.

“It is.”

“Can I ask who’s calling?”

Lucy worried.  If it was child services… there had been some questions after her mom had been asked to leave the room to fill out paperwork.  She’d had the earring on, and she’d heard her mom say something to a colleague, which helped tip Lucy off and let her give the right answers.

She hoped.

A kid had come in partially strangled, bruised and beaten, so they had to ask: was it her mom?

“I see.  Please give me a moment.”

Lucy was at her bedroom door when her mom caught up to her, and helped walk her to the master bedroom, instead of her own room.

“Who is it?” Lucy asked.

Her mom handed her the phone.  “Abraham Musser.”

Next Chapter